Top Ten Tuesday: Mainstream Popular Authors that I Still Have Not Read

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics

• 5th September: Books That Defied My Expectations
• 12th September: Books Awaiting Reviews
• 19th September: Books on My Fall 2023 To-Read List
• 26th September: Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve Their Own Book
• 3rd October: Reading Goals I Still Want to Accomplish Before the End of the Year
• 17th October: Books with Weather Events in the Title/on the Cover
• 24th October: Atmospheric Books
• 31st October: Hallowe’en Freebie – Books featuring spooky hares
• 7th November: Book Titles That Would Make Great Newspaper Headlines

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This theme asks us to look at and reflect on those super-popular – possibly over-hyped? – novels that we have not yet read. In fact I have just begun reading Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi which I have heard so much good about and would otherwise have been on this list.

And where better to look for ‘mainstream popular authors’ than that bastion of populism, booktok?

So these are popular booktok books that I have not yet read… but books that do actually appeal to me…

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The Atlas Six, Olivia Blake

Secrets. Betrayal. Seduction.
Welcome to the Alexandrian Society.

When the world’s best magicians are offered an extraordinary opportunity, saying yes is easy. Each could join the secretive Alexandrian Society, whose custodians guard lost knowledge from ancient civilizations. Their members enjoy a lifetime of power and prestige. Yet each decade, only six practitioners are invited – to fill five places.

Contenders Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona are inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds. Parisa Kamali is a telepath, who sees the mind’s deepest secrets. Reina Mori is a naturalist who can perceive and understand the flow of life itself. And Callum Nova is an empath, who can manipulate the desires of others. Finally there’s Tristan Caine, whose powers mystify even himself.

Following recruitment by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they travel to the Society’s London headquarters. Here, each must study and innovate within esoteric subject areas. And if they can prove themselves, over the course of a year, they’ll survive. Most of them.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Taylor Jenkins Reid

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?

Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ’80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara

When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they’re broke, adrift, and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. There is kind, handsome Willem, an aspiring actor; JB, a quick-witted, sometimes cruel Brooklyn-born painter seeking entry to the art world; Malcolm, a frustrated architect at a prominent firm; and withdrawn, brilliant, enigmatic Jude, who serves as their centre of gravity.

Over the decades, their relationships deepen and darken, tinged by addiction, success, and pride. Yet their greatest challenge, each comes to realize, is Jude himself, by midlife a terrifyingly talented litigator yet an increasingly broken man, his mind and body scarred by an unspeakable childhood, and haunted by what he fears is a degree of trauma that he’ll not only be unable to overcome – but that will define his life forever.

She Who Became The Sun, Shelley Parker-Chan

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty plain, a seer shows two children their fates. For a family’s eighth-born son, there’s greatness. For the second daughter, nothing.

In 1345, China lies restless under harsh Mongol rule. And when a bandit raid wipes out their home, the two children must somehow survive. Zhu Chongba despairs and gives in. But the girl resolves to overcome her destiny. So she takes her dead brother’s identity and begins her journey. Can Zhu escape what’s written in the stars, as rebellion sweeps the land? Or can she claim her brother’s greatness – and rise, ruthlessly, to take the dragon throne?

Bunny, Mona Ward

We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.

Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort – a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other ‘Bunny’.

But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole.

Blending sharp satire with fairytale horror, Bunny provides a hilarious look at the dark side of female friendship from one of fiction’s most original voices.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father – despite his hard-won citizenship – Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper – despite the displeasure of Achilles’s mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, Juno Dawson

Hidden among us is a secret coven of witches.

Know has Her Majesty’s Royal Coven,they protect crown and country from magical forces and otherworldly evil.

But their greatest enemy will come from within…

There are whisperings of a prophecy that will bring the coven to its knees, and four best friends are about to be caught at the centre.

Life as a modern witch was never simple … but now it’s about to get apocalyptic.

Honey & Spice, Bolu Babalola

Sisters, beware the ‘Wasteman of Whitewell’ . . .

As host of radio show Brown Sugar, Kiki Banjo’s mission is to protect her listeners from heartbreak. Which puts Whitewell College’s newest student, handsome ‘player’ Malakai Korede, at the top of her hitlist.

But when Kiki’s dream summer internship in New York depends on finding a fresh angle for her radio show, she must make an unlikely bargain with Malakai himself – to put their simmering clashes aside to form a fake relationship, something sweet and spicy enough to win over the whole campus.

However, close proximity to the notorious heartbreaker brings everything Kiki thought she knew about her own heart into question. Why does throwing out her stringent romantic rulebook suddenly so tempting?

Will she find it in her to resist?

Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo

Soldier. Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold – a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed.

Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue as she trains with the Grisha, her country’s magical military elite – and falls under the spell of their notorious leader, the Darkling. He believes Alina can summon a force capable of destroying the Shadow Fold and reuniting their war-ravaged country, but only if she can master her untamed gift.

As the threat to the kingdom mounts and Alina unlocks the secrets of her past, she will make a dangerous discovery that could threaten all she loves and the very future of a nation.

Welcome to Ravka . . . a world of science and superstition where nothing is what it seems.

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So, friends, which of these that I have not read yet do you think I should pick up next?

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Upcoming Top Ten Tuesday Themes

November 21: Reasons Why I’m Thankful for Books (In honor of Thanksgiving in the USA.)
November 28: Books Set In X (Pick a setting and share books that are all set there. This could be a specific continent or country, a state, in outer space, underwater, on a ship or boat, at the beach, etc.)
December 5: Freebie
December 12: Books On My Winter 2022-2023 To-Read List
December 19: Books.I Hop Santa Brings/Bookish Wishes
December 26: The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Bookshelf (Maybe share your holiday book haul?)